First you find her, then you lose her

A distant cousin popped up on WikiTree the other day, so I connected his ancestor, Janet SINTON up to her parents, James SINTON & Margaret WILKIE.
Then looked to see if there was any research outstanding on the family that might be advanced.

Janet had a sister Mary SINTON, aged 37, still living, when father James died in 1855.
But where was she between 1818 and 1855? What happened to her?
Past investigations had found no obvious death, marriage, or census entry in Scotland, and rather too many Mary anyones, preferably born Melrose or Bowden, in the 1851 census in Scotland, let alone of an age, born Scotland, in England.

So this time I tried immigration records - and turned up a Mary SINTON emigrating to New York on the "Yazoo", arriving in July 1838.
Bit of a long shot I thought - until I noticed the family above her on the passenger list.

John & Margaret FAIRBAIRN with family - known to have ended up in Ontario by Dec 1838, dying in Blandford.

Margaret was Mary's older sister.

So the chase has shifted from after 1855, likely Scotland, to finding any evidence of Mary after 1838, likely Canada but possibly USA, and her death after 1855 somewhere.

Need to upload to GEDMatch; One thing leads to another

Helen popped up in my Ancestry DNA matches, with sufficient of her tree attached for me to believe that the DNA match could be accounted for by our believed to be shared Peter SINTON and Jeanie WIGHT who married at Southdean, Roxburghshire in 1806.  See #1.

Thanks to that bit of activity on an update on the family of Peter and Jeanie's daughter Margaret (I hadn't followed Margaret's grandson John down beyond the 1881 census until now, so Helen was a very pleasant surprise) I took another look around some of the rest of Peter and Jeanie's family - who don't appear often in baptism records.
Which led me to review the family of Elspeth/Euphemia SINTON who married Robert SLATER/SLATTER/SCLAITER/SCLATTER, fisherman of Lessudden.
An 1855 birth cert. of a son Thomas had helpfully indicated that their eldest son James, born about 1845 was still alive in 1855 but I'd never found hide nor hair of him beyond the 1861 census.
Mind you it was quite some years ago since I'd looked. So many more online records these days!
Still couldn't find him obvious in any Scottish census records, nor those further afield easily available on Ancestry.
So I turned my attention to the children of his brother Robert.
Popping Elspeth Sinton SLATER into a census search to find her beyond the 1891 I already had wasn't any more successful this time - but did result in an entry in the National Probate Index in 1926 in London with the surprising information that she died, single, in Dublin.
What's more, the administration was granted to one James SLATER, retired engineer.
Surely that was going to be her uncle? Missing in action beyond 1861?
Who has now subsequently been found in the 1911 census in Dublin North at the same address as Elspeth's normal residence at the time of her death.
James was shown as a widower, marine engineer born Scotland, religion Free Church of Scotland.
In the household was an unmarried sister-in-law Mary MILLS, also born Scotland, Free Church.
Which was enough to find James' marriage to Jessie MILLS in Hawick in 1869 - usual residence for James was already Dublin, occupation engine fitter.
Next mission, find out if James and Jessie had any children.

#1: the dangers of Ancestry DNA and their refusal to supply a chromosome browser.
Thankfully Helen did upload to GEDMatch where the actual DNA match details could be compared.
The relationship between Margaret (married Robert AINSLIE) to Peter and Jeanie (WIGHT) SINTON has yet to be proven by DNA as at 4C1R we didn't get the luck of the draw for a provable segment of shared SINTON/WIGHT DNA.
The larger of our two segments turns out to be a longer ago bit of DNA and somewhere back up a different line of my ancestry - this one:
http://surnames.lornahen.com/tng/lh/dnagrp17p036.php
and an unknown line of Helen's. 
The smaller bit, at only 7cM, is too small, untriangulated with anything else as yet, so inconclusive as to ancestry.

How many to go: Helen SINTON mtDNA update

Further research into descendants of Helen WIGHT nee SINTON, and a resulting update to WikiTree for her daughters' families in particular has extended the chart of those carrying Helen's mitochondrial DNA.
Unfortunately, it looks to be a rather short list of living candidates, and with at least one branch apparently in Sth Africa and another in Portugal, information is a little harder to come by. 

Would love to hear from:

• any descendants of Jane Wight BECKINGHAM nee McGREGOR, although indications are there's only one daughter, unmarried at age 30 when travelling to/from the UK in 1960.
• any descendants of Margaret Scott NORTH nee CROWDEN, born Edinburgh, but apparently marrying and living in Lisbon, Portugal in the 1950s
• any descendants of Isabella Wight SCOTT nee BELL, who married George Gideon SCOTT in 1936 at Innerleithen. 
• any living family for Helen Euphemia Leckie BROWN nee SOUTAR? 

The search might have to go back another generation and down the mtDNA candidates from Jane WIGHT, which might actually be easier.
Surely at least one of the Jane SINTON/James TELFER/TELFORD branch will have a living mtDNA descendant in Australia?

Love to hear from you if you can help in this quest.

How many to go?

As you can probably deduce, I'm a DNA junkie.
Apart from using my autosomal DNA matches (and a lot of genealogical research) to map my chromosomes so that I know (eventually - I hope!) which bits on which chromosomes were inherited from which ancestors*, another of my aims to is document the haplogroups for each of my ancestors out to my 2*great grandparents (at least) -  yDNA and/or mtDNA.

Knowing this data is of help in working with autosomal DNA matches to rule in or out of contention certain lines, and you never do know what else you may learn.

So I thought it was time to take stock.
The above is a screen shot of my ancestry tree pedigree with the symbols I've attached for the appropriate haplogroups where known.

How am I doing?
Grandparents: one to go, George Ernest ANDREWS.
There's a test in progress for a descendant of Simon ANDREWS, due next month.

Great Grandparents: two to go, other than George Gibson ANDREWS who will be sorted next month.
Helen Sinton WIGHT (WorldConnect / WikiTree / Geni / FamilySearch) and
Ellen TURNBULL (WorldConnect / WikiTree / Geni / FamilySearch.

Can you help?
Concentrating on Helen Sinton WIGHT first.
Helen Sinton WIGHT has no living descendants who inherited her mitochondrial DNA.
Working back to her mother, Helen WIGHT nee SINTON (my webpages / WorldConnect / WikiTree) there may be some options, but although (or because) this WIGHT family is the one that started my whole genealogy journey back in the 1970s, it is the least documented, and very poorly sourced given how new I was to this back then! 

Can YOU help by contributing any knowledge you have on descendants of Helen?
The three main collaborative world trees that anyone can access for free, that I follow and work with are: WikiTree, Geni and FamilySearch.
Let's see if we can turn up any living descendants down any of the lines in general, hopefully at least one in particular that carries Helen's mitochondrial DNA AND one who may be convinced to indulge my curiousity.

Both WikiTree and Geni have DNA related tools that can be quickly checked for DNA candidates of interest - and easily rechecked as the tree grows:
WikiTree -  descendants of Helen who have inherited her mtDNA a short list - but I am working on an update as we speak. None on the current list are still with us, and the first two branches I've worked on don't appear to have any likely surviving candidates for mtDNA.
Geni - living descendants of Helen who have inherited her mtDNA (none as at Jul 2016)
FamilySearch - descendants of Helen WIGHT nee SINTON

Regardless of this specific quest for mitochondrial DNA candidates, there may well be some cousins still around who would be most welcome to contribute autosomal DNA and see what that adds to our overall DNA knowledge of connections.
Pop along to my atDNA project FFLornaHen on FamilyTreeDNA and order a FamilyFinder test, or test at Ancestry and then transfer that file to both GEDMatch.comhttp://GEDMatch.com and to FamilyTreeDNA so we can all fish in both ponds for matches and use the tools only available on the latter two sites to make the most of our investment(s).
I'd love to hear from any of you - contact form on most of my webpages.

* the main aim of all that work with my atDNA is to concentrate on the matches at the spots where I don't yet know which ancestor is to blame - can you hear the sounds of the crumbling brickwalls?
A wonderful side effect is of course confirming the family tree, testing theories, and as recently highlighted, finding new siblings for some of the ancestors.
Some of the distant cousins you get to "meet" may even be able to shed more light on our shared ancestors with photos, family knowledge etc.

Who is Adam?

Does anyone have any evidence as to who the parents of Adam HENDERSON are?

Adam was:

• born abt 1815 Southdean, Roxburghshire, 
• married Janet EASTON in Oxnam 2 days prior to the 1841 census, 
• lived Swinside, Oxnam (1841), 
• popped up in West Middle, Cavers in 1851, 
• Hallrule Lodge, Bedrule (1861) and 
• Newton, Bedrule (1871) 
• before emigrating in 1873 with Janet and son George, 
• settling in Alma, Jackson Co., Wisconsin where several family already were.

Why am I asking?
I'm investigating an excellent DNA match between a descendant of Adam (via son Peter), myself, and two of my cousins (2nd and 3C1R) where we all descend from Peter SINTON & Jane WIGHT.
The most likely line of the match's pedigree that accounts for this is that of Peter Oliver HENDERSON who turns out to be the son of Adam and Janet (EASTON) HENDERSON

The indications currently are that Adam is highly likely to belong to Peter SINTON's family somewhere.
But where?

There's an 1808 marriage of an Oliver HENDERSON (Hawick) to an Isabel SINTON (Cavers) in the Cavers Parish register, which looks promising.
Although there's no further info known, the couple fits the timeframe, place, and naming pattern to be Adam's parents.
If Adam and Janet's son Peter Oliver was named for both Adam and Janet's fathers we do have a bit of a problem as the above Peter SINTON's sister Isabel, who is of an age, is accounted for and I don't know about any other Peters.

So, I'm on the look out for others claiming descent from any of the above who may already have joined in the fun of dna testing for genealogy, or be prepared to, so we can compare results and
confirm that the dna match is indeed pointing to Adam.
Missing bits of the papertrails would also be most welcome - a Wisconsin death record/obit for Adam naming his parents? The fate of Oliver HENDERSON and Isabel SINTON?

Check out Adam on FamilySearch  FamilyTree for some of the descendants identified / linked to date.

Potential matches/matches are welcome to join my FFLornaHen autosomal DNA project on FamilyTreeDNA, or if you are on GEDMatch.com please get in touch with your id number there so we can check out any potential connections.

Update time

My RootsWeb WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has been refreshed.
Can't recall exactly what all has changed but there have been some general tidy-ups and checking of early research, and an unexpected new branch on the SINTON family.

You may have read this post about Catherine SINTON, not two people whose fates and "tree" were unknown, but one person now placed in her tree.
Turns out that Catherine had yet another illegitimate child, Ethel Janet.
Ethel's marriage certificate was an interesting blend of fact and fiction, but the family stories passed on to the descendant who found me had fitted with Catherine's life in Alford Forest, so yet another mystery placed in her SINTON tree - same tree, same Catherine.

Can you spot any resemblance between Phyl's great grandmother Kate (1850-1939)

and my 2* great grandmother Helen WIGHT nee SINTON (abt 1820 - 1883)

and Helen's sister Jane TELFER nee SINTON (abt 1812 - 1902)?

(Helen and Jane are 1st cousins once removed to Kate.)


Noone seems to know what happened to Ethel's brother Ernest John SINTON - last sighting Auckland in 1928 - anyone got a stray Ernest needing a home?

Chromosome map update

Inspired by the GRAHAM dna story over the last two posts (and finally figuring out an easier way to produce the formatted data required), here's the current state of own chromosome maps.
I don't yet know whether any traces of this GRAHAM dna can be detected in my own genes (as opposed to my maternal aunts') as not all of those involved have uploaded to GEDMatch, yet, for the smaller segments to be checked.

The links to the respective surnames involved are to one of WikiTree's wonderful DNA features.
Just some of the more distant lines identified are added as labels on this post.

Paternal side map, ie my Dad's HENDERSON and DAVIDSON ancestry (Surnames involved):

Maternal side map, ie my Mum's ANDREWS and ROWE ancestry (Surnames involved):

Quite a few empty spots to go yet, not sure I'll live long enough to fill in all the gaps.

Build your own "luck"

Isn't it  amazing we get lucky in this genie hunt - by working hard!

Keep notes on all the potentially interesting snippets when you find them and you never know when you'll get lucky after all.
Some years ago I noted a newspaper obituary for a William SINTON who had died in Birkenhead (Cheshire) having served 20 years as chief engineer for the Ocean S.S. Co.
Never could find him in a census to figure out who he was.

I'm currently checking off assorted old SINTON research to upload more to WikiTree. In particular at the moment, the children of John SINTON & Alison HALL.
Amongst whom were a William and Elizabeth with nothing known beyond the 1851 census in Lismore & Appin (Argyll).

Something brought me back to the above obituary so I decided to explore further.
With probate information now more readily available I quickly found that he was married to an Elizabeth Formby HALSALL.
William was obviously home from his travels at regular intervals, as although he didn't appear in any census, Elizabeth shows up with a growing family over the years.
The first child was called Mary Hall SINTON, so this was looking a rather likely lead as to the fate of William.
Then in the 1871 census, who should show up living with wife Elizabeth but a "sister" Elizabeth SINTON, of the right age, and shown as born Scotland.

Bingo. Two birds one stone.

SINTON * two

Fascinating where a posting on my guestbook can lead.
Bronwyn left a query asking if I had any clues about her children's 3greats grandmother Catherine SINTON.
Most definitely.
We have now both solved mysteries.
I now know both who the mysterious Catherine in Alford Forest was, and what happened to Catherine in my SINTON tree - one and the same person, or at least I strongly suspect so.

Then a day or so later, Bronwyn casually mentions that she thought Catherine's sister had also emigrated and settled in Alford Forest.
And so it turned out.
There are an awful lot of GRIEVEs to sort out, so anyone interested in helping with who belongs to which GRIEVE family around the Alford Forest/Methven/Rakaia area, please do get in touch.

A few more pins have been placed on the SINTON map.

The Australian Melting Pot

The Australian melting pot strikes again.
Only once have I ever found a connection between my paternal ancestral forest and my maternal one.
Even then it was rather tenuous.
Helen CLYNE, a descendant of a FINLAYSON family who just have to be connected to my James FINLAYSON of Clayoch (Caithness), married John GIBSON in Victoria. Their son George, married his cousin Edna GIBSON, whose grandfather was my 2 greats grandmother's second husband, Capt John GIBSON. Confused? Of course.

Just this week another connection, slightly less tenuous, has popped out of the woodwork.
A thank you for posting the info on Jane SINTON was received, welcome, and surprising, in that not many people stop and thank you for the data being shared.
Another of the Sth Australian branches of the Jane SINTON/ James TELFER/TELFORD tree, originating on the Scottish Borders, has now been better documented.  Along the way the delights of the communal, free, WikiTree have also been shared, and Lisa is underway using software developed for the purpose of sharing family trees - but I do recommend that you don't fully trust online trees for your data - keep a master copy on your own computer using a good genie package ( I use TMG, but also recommend RootsMagic. Load any trials that take your fancy and try out one to suit you, data can always be shifted from one to the other using GEDCOM export/import).

The connection? In our initial email swap I noticed that Lisa also mentioned James son of Gaius WINES as one of her ancestors - Gaius' second wife was one Hannah WINES, one of my Somerset rellies from South Petherton. Chances are Gaius is as well, but the connection isn't documented , at least not that I currently know of. (Perhaps my Thomas and Gaius' grandfather Robert are siblings?).

I'd transcribed Gaius' 1869 will when I was in Taunton, way back in 1994.  It had mentioned ""and as I assisted all my sons when they emigrated to Australia I have not further provided for them by this my will but my desire is that if my son Robert shall return to England within 5 years after my said daughters shall have come into possession of my said property he shall receive the sum of ten pounds ... contributed and paid equally by my said daughters and that if either of my sons James and Sampson shall return to England within the like period then I wish him to have the sum of five pounds paid in like manner".
Tucked inside the will was an account: beavers and gloves £1; for cake 7s; cheese 6s; ale 6s; wine 2 4; bottle gin 3 6; Mr Clark for ham 8 3; owe John Banfield for one sack of barley; paid for butter  1 4; Sounds like a good send off.

Sintons, Fairbairns and Hendersons

Family Tree DNA recently "invited" assorted dna participants to add Family Finder to their DNA knowledge, at a considerable discount.
This tests chronicles your autosomal dna, ie that you inherit from all of your direct ancestors, as compared to the Y-DNA used for Surname dna projects which is only passed on from father to son, or the mtDNA similarly only from a mother to her children, but only passed on by the female line.
Should you be lucky enough for Family Finder to find a match with someone else in their database, you get to see which bits of your chromosome you match on.
As this test is really only most useful for the closer generations, up to 5-6 generations, ie back to 2-3*great grandparents, to find matches, it was a bit of a long shot to expect Peter and Michael to show up with the distant ancestry that we shared, but we decided to proceed anyway.
Peter and I have Peter SINTON and Jane WIGHT as common ancestors, my 3*great grandparents.
Michael and I share  Walter FAIRBAIRN & Agnes ROBINSON, also my 3* great grandparents, but Michael's 4*greats.

As you can see above, the blue portions are far more prominent.
They reflect my shared ancestry with Bill. We share William HENDERSON & Helen Sinton WIGHT, my great grandparents.
I guess we can conclude that the overlapping pink and blue lines are shared SINTON ancestry (unless of course there is an undocumented relationship between Jane WIGHT, Peter SINTON's wife, and Helen Sinton WIGHT's ancestry).

SINTON twigs

Email from Dave greeted me this morning, researching Archibald Douglas TURNBULL (Jnr).
Did I know his wife's name? All he had was BROWN and couldn't find a marriage in England.
He was one step ahead of me, I didn't even have Archibald married.
I ended the day a few steps ahead - they married in Edinburgh, presumably because Mary Grace BROWN was working at Fleur, Coldingham at the time, even though she was Northumberland born and bred.
No idea if Mary is any connection to her husband's grandmother Jessie Douglas Carmichael BROWN, with or without an E, daughter of David BROWN(E) watchmaker born Edinburgh.

The SINTON descendant chart these TURNBULLs belong to has been updated with the above and one or two other connected dates, including that for the above Archibald's grandfather's 1934 death as there was a probate indexed in 1934 for Thomas Wilson TURNBULL of the right place, wife and children.
Some trees seem to claim this Thomas Wilson T. as the father of an Archibald Lancelot TURNBULL and have him dying in 1913 in Linlithgow, which date and/or place cannot be verified.

Robert & Jane (WIGHT) SINTON

An email from Morley asking if I could quantify the rumoured connection between the families of Elizabeth MABON, whose son John married Jane ELLIOT, and the SINTONs, Jane ELLIOT's sister Betsy having married William son of Robert & Jane (WIGHT) SINTON.
This SINTON family had children baptized in Ancrum, ROX before emigrating to Beauharnois County, Quebec around 1831.
It had been rather a long time since I last looked at this SINTON family, well before easier access to census data online.
Haven't answered his question, but have updated my knowledge of the family, and realised that they weren't included on my SINTONs page - now remedied,with more updates on the chart included yet to come.
Should any SINTON descendants read this, please pop along to the SINTON Surname DNA project to join it and see if there's any connection to my SINTONs!

SINTONs and TELFORDs

The update binge continues with my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson also being republished.
Of recent note are the updates to the Australian SINTON/TELFER/TELFORD descendants in Sth Australia. Thank you Linda for getting in touch and helping sort out at least some of the SMITHs of Glenburnie, and prompting the overdue review of Dorothy's 2008 info.
The Mt Gambier cemetery records were also a great help in overcoming the deficiencies in the BDM indexes for Sth Australia.

5th: Time for the SINTONs

Courtesy of a couple of FindAGrave people finding my tree and providing links to headstones they had contributed to, a couple of SINTON branches have been updated, with additional help from the wonderful network of helpful people out there in the genealogical community willing to take headstone photos and search records they have (thank you Ken, Linda, Norrie & Scott).
The updates will appear in assorted online trees in due course.

• The Fife TELFER family of William TELFER & Lillias SKIRVING
  
• The SINTON/FAIRBAIRN branch of John FAIRBAIRN & Margaret MORRISON in Ontario.

Interesting that the latter's dtr Jessie's (EBY) headstone has her as 6 years older than she actually was, especially as in all census data her age is accurate. Who says that women always lie about their age, implying that they are younger than they are!

26th: Ross & Cromarty to Winnipeg

Nearly a year on since Ross & Cromarty rose to prominence in my Border SINTONs (see prior post).
This time the activity was prompted by contact from a researcher of the Canadian family of Margaret McRAE & William ROSS. Her research had the exact birthdate for her Margaret as "mine" and wondered if her Canadian family might be a match.
Looks like it to me, not just from the exact birth date, but also from immigration records showing Margaret was from "Ross", when she followed William to Manitoba in 1906, and two of her sisters being known to also have emigrated (1908).
So the family of James & Margaret (WILKIE) SINTON continues to grow and spread.
The grandson of Margaret's she was doing the research for is now in touch, so more updates will no doubt occur.
When Margaret died (in Vancouver), her obituary apparently mentioned she had family in Scotland and Eastern Canada, all yet to be identified, particularly which others of the family emigrated to Canada and stayed in the East.
The SINTON descendant chart is being updated as research progresses (click on the + signs to expand the chart and view John's descendants as I currently believe them to be).

29th: Back to Swordale, ROC and SINTONs

I'm back fossicking around Ross & Cromarty again.
Prompted this time by a posting the other day against my prior posting re the John SINTON and Catherine CROSS family mentioned back in Feb 2009.
This time round I also followed another apparent 1851 SINTON family, from Roxburghshire but living in Lochbroom, around for a while, before, this time, convincing myself that they were misindexed in 1851 as SINTON and are really LINTONs.
John and Catherine however remain firmly as SINTON with a few more details now being found.
Those with ancestry access can see where I've got too adding sources to the family as I've included John on my tree there until such time the rest of my published data catches up with this branch of the SINTONs.
Farrell, the poster of the comment, is a descendant from John and Catherine's daughter Janet/Jessie via her son John GRAHAM (b. 1867 Swordale).

4th: Two for the price of one

Harry kindly forwarded an OPR page he had downloaded for something when he noticed that it would push all my Borders buttons - mentioned SINTON, FAIRBAIRN and occurred in Southdean (it also had a couple of OLIVERs on it).

The SINTON reference was the marriage entry for Robert TELFER and Agnes SINTON, which I had an incomplete transcript of, but no copy, so that filled in a gap in my records.

The FAIRBAIRN reference was the marriage of a Nancy FAIRBAIRN to John RIDDELL (2 Dec 1808), which sounded (mostly) familiar.
That too filled a couple of gaps in my records. Nancy was previously only known to me as Agnes, and I knew her parents had moved from St Boswells to Macksidemoor, Southdean by 1804, and were recorded at Moorhead in 1806.
So still there in 1808, and now with a marriage date for Agnes/Nancy, a bit earlier than I'd guessed from the age of the 1st child known to me (Archibald, 1812, Nisbet Mill).

Updates to the WorldConnect links above will follow in due course.
(Thanks Harry)

9th: and continue to lead

Having updated some of the related TURNBULLs that connect to my tree, I strayed onto another TURNBULL line, that of Archibald TURNBULL of Minto, who married Agnes WILSON, one of my SINTON tree descendants.
The only census data I'd ever checked for them was 1881 when it first came out on cd.
Updates nowhere near finished, but what a fascinating family, and a wonderful happenstance.
Given there were 14 children, could take some time to work thru what updates should now be more readily available to be found.

Thought eldest son Archibald might not have lasted beyond 1871 when I couldn't find him in 1881. But a family that certainly looked like it would be his popped out of the woodwork for 1891 - from farmer's son to "Minister of the Established Church - Foreign Ministry", and an absence in 1881 probably explained by the birthplaces of the children - Indies, East in 1891, India in 1901.
One of which census records I was lucky to find as he left for India 5 days later!

The marriage cert. for his second marriage, to Catherine Agnes FERGUSON nee WEMYSS proved I had the right chap, so I kept digging.
And happened upon the burial of his son Archibald McDiarmid TURNBULL in Calcutta.
He appears to have gone from a 17 yr old "artist-painter" in 1901 boarding in Glasgow Govan, to tea planter in India - with a video being made (for reasons as yet unknown) of a search for his burial record in the records of the Scottish Church of St Andrew in Calcutta with enough of the found record shakily legible.
Talk about happenstance!
WIGHT and SINTON descendant charts have had a preliminary update, Rootsweb db LornaHenderson updates will follow in due course.

Where things lead

Started catching up on processing the transcripts from NRH that Robert so kindly sends every so often.
This one was a 1936 FAIRBAIRN/HALL marriage I was trying to slot into his correct FAIRBAIRN tree. In the process of that I corrected one of my FAIRBAIRN trees convincing myself that the informant for their son Robert's death (his son David) got his grandmother's name wrong (given as Elizabeth WATSON, instead of Margaret **see below).
That sorted, I turned my attention to the 1936 bride, whose father was given as Robert Oliver HALL.
With names like that it was a fair bet that that their just might be a connection to one or other of my Southdean trees - and how.
Robert turned out to be the brother of Isabella and Margaret, both of whom I already knew had married into my tree, one to a WIGHT line, the other to a SINTON line. All are children of James HALL and Alison OLIVER, with James having a brother Thomas who also married into my SINTON tree.
A wonderful set of connections.

But wait, there's more.
Keying all of this into my ancestry tree as I found the related census records etc up popped a family tree match down the WIGHT line.
I had never gotten back to John James TURNBULL (or many of his siblings) to figure out their fate beyond 1881, and there was Morag's tree. So an email was sent and I now have a newfound cousin in Canada, who replied promptly, and has given me some updates on her farflung branch.

** and even more.
Checking back to my database as I wrote the above, I realised that although I had corrected Robert's mother to Margaret WATSON, I had not noticed that I already had others of the correct family in my database already.
Robert had a brother James whose son James married in Quebec (1860 to Catherine PIDGEON).
When time permits an outline tree will probably be included in the Wanted! pages of the Fairbairn ONS/DNA project to see if there are any additional connections.